Palm Beach Law Discriminatory

October 13, 1985

ALL CHILD CARE workers in Florida must be licensed and fingerprinted so that innocent toddlers can be protected from persons with criminal pasts.

Private detectives must be licensed and fingerprinted so that only people of good moral character enter this sometimes dangerous field. Police officers, firefighters and persons licensed to carry a gun have to be fingerprinted.

Why? Because persons in these professions can pose physical -- and sometimes deadly -- danger to the public. In all these cases, special scrutiny is totally justifiable because the focus is narrow and the goal of public safety is clear.

This is not the case with the Town of Palm Beach`s 48-year-old ordinance that requires the registration and fingerprinting of hotel and restaurant workers, maids, gardeners, and others employed in similar jobs.

The potential threat to the public`s well being posed by these people is no greater than the threat posed by heirs to fortunes, corporate raiders or lawyers. In fact, sometimes it is considerably less, and the people cited in the ordinance should not be treated like second-class citizens because they get their hands dirty while working hard for a living.

A Palm Beach hotel worker finally was moved to challenge the constitutionality of the ordinance in a federal lawsuit and a Florida legislator has proposed a state law to ban local worker registration laws that are as vague and broad and Palm Beach`s.

State Rep. Jim Hargrett, D-Tampa, has dubbed his proposal the ``Doonesbury Bill,`` a reference to Doonesbury cartoon strip in which Garry Trudeau compared Palm Beach`s worker identification law to the trappings of South African apartheid.

The House Community Affairs Committee Wednesday approved the bill, which says the ordinance ``violates the rights of citizens of the State of Florida and serves no legitimate public service.``

The denouncement is precise and needs little more elaboration, except to say that the Legislature should quickly and unanimously pass the Doonesbury bill this spring.